Strategies for housing rehabilitation in the search for mixing generations and family types: an approach based on a transformation grammar

Abstract

This abstract describes a Ph.D. research that sets off with the premise that the future of real estate market in Portugal will require the rehabilitation of existing residential areas and that it will be of utmost importance the incorporation of Information, Communications and Automation Technologies (ICAT) as well as the transformation of dwellings to respond to the new demands of dwellers which incorporate the rising of different forms of co-habitation. The study focus on a specific building type (“rabo-de-bacalhau”) built between 1945 and 1965. The final research objective is the definition of design guidelines to support architects in the adaptation of existing residential areas with the purpose of ICAT incorporation and the creation of diversity within the building and the sorrowing residential area. The goal is to use Shape Grammar and Space Syntax as tools to identify and encode the principles and rules behind the adaptation of the existing houses.